Steve's first proper WOD

Today I ran a WOD for my client Steve. The aim of today's session was to work a little bit more intensely and spend more time doing the workout itself than simply learning new skills. The last few sessions have been focusing on basic compound movements like deadlift and push up, while we have also started developing Steve's strength by using static holds on the rings.

Being in his mid forties and unused to exercise, let alone Crossfit metabolic conditioning workouts, I nevertheless wanted to give Steve a more substantial taste of the feeling that comes from working a number of compound moves together quickly for time. I was also very keen, for my part, to get the scaling right for him. When I first started Crossfitting, I of course overdid things by not scaling correctly. The result was for a while fatigue and longer recovery times.

The workout I put together for him was based loosely on Crossfit's recent "Bunch of Stuff" workout. Before Steve arrived, I had undetakien the workout myself in a modified format, as we don't yet own a rowing machine. By doing the WOD, I decided these things:

Leave out the dips for him for the time being
Cut the rep range pretty substantially

As it turned out and you will hear in the video, Steve took alot less time than I had suggested. I figured he should be aiming for under 17 minutes and he made it all in 9:40. I had scaled more than I thought, but - and this is crucial - FOR BEGINNERS IT IS WAY BETTER TO SCALE TOO EASY THAN TOO HARD!!!!

During the workout, we quickly changed the ring static holds for static plank holds at 15 seconds x2, as the elbows to knees and subsequent jumping pull ups really tired Steve's arms and he had no confidence to hold still on the rings at that point.

Above all, he KEPT GOING. I was really please that the workout had a great effect. He managed to keep a fairly consistent pace and had some left in the tank to speed up a little at the end. As you can see from the video, he was tired and breathing hard, but also happy and he began to recover quickly during a cuppa and a post workout chat. Awesome stuff Steve!

Also, it's been great to start working on some of the Crossfit basics with Steve's wife, who came to the studio seeking some nutritional and exercise advice. The session before Steve's today we started looking at proper squat technique, a push up progression from the knees and beginning upper body strength training using some Get Me Ups.

Steve's WOD was:
25 Sumo deadlift high pulls
20 up and downs
10 knees to elbows
15 jumping pull ups
15 seconds static plank x 2
10 Turkish get ups alternating arms